


Silhouettes In the Curtain's Ashes

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, As in sometimes the Hive takes over Paul and he has to lock himself away, Emma is never hurt, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Hugs, In that Paul and Emma are fine and living together, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Emma, Possession, Post-Canon, Recovery, Semi-infected Paul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24479332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: They've both got their own traumas and their own bad days. Unfortunately, Paul's bad days are the Hive's good days. Emma still isn't leaving him alone, ever again.
Relationships: Paul Matthews/Emma Perkins
Comments: 15
Kudos: 56





	Silhouettes In the Curtain's Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> The set-up for this fic could be triggering for people, so please take care of yourselves: sometimes Paul has 'relapses' (as in the infection flares up) and has to lock himself away, and Emma has to hear threats from infected!Paul. Paul speaks later and is very apologetic despite not having any control over it.

Emma finds the bedroom door locked with the key on the floor outside and knows it's going to be one of those days. Or weeks. Whichever. Still fucking sucks, however long it takes.

She makes a coffee in the kitchen – the only place she can have coffee now, even though the odds of having it poisoned with space goo twice in one lifetime seem pretty low – and breathes in deeply. Caffeine and cleaning chemicals. Yeah, that figures: Paul usually tries to work the energy out first by cleaning. Doesn't change anything and she doesn't see why he thinks it does. Actually, scratch that, she knows why he does it. She just doesn't get why he feels like he has to be helpful, when there's an infection starting to hum in his brain.

They never know what sets it off. Even Emma's fun days have more obvious triggers, for all that at the time they seem so dumb: the bell in a shop or an apron that's just the wrong shade of green. But at least when it's her, Paul can hold her and talk to her through her brain's bullshit. This, though? Paul won't let himself near her. Or the other him. Not him. Shit.

The poptart is just to give her something to do. She probably won't eat it – will just leave it there, sad and melted. Really, it's busywork, sure as wiping down the counter or counting cups.

Mug in one hand, plate in the other. Go back to the door. Put them down, sit down, then curse and get up again to get the blanket from the couch. There's always something she forgets and – he put her pills on the couch. And both pillows. Shit, looks like he actually made it up for her, sleepshirt underneath when she pulls back the covers. Why does he have to be so considerate, anyway? Asshole.

The wooden floor's still chilly, but now she has her trusty blanket, which is definitely just to keep her butt warm and nothing to do with her also wrapping it around herself, tucked in like a hug. Emma's never once thought of herself as a huggy person – her personal space is generally a football-field distance if she can get away with it – but she's already missing the usual post-work embrace, Paul's arms wrapping around her as she buries her face in his chest and knows she survived another day. This existing separate thing, it's not cool. Not in the slightest.

They did talk about not living together – relationships from traumatic experiences, the Hive's lingering interest in her, all that jazz (not fucking jazz, _please_ ). It was one of those awkward teeth-on-edge conversations, where each of you knows what the responsible thing is and neither of you wants it. Trying to convince yourself more than the other person, or thinking that if you talk long enough somehow the world will go the way you want it. But, as unsafe as it is, _logically_ , Emma never feels safe anywhere so she might as well get the illusion of it from him.

Even when...this shit happens.

She blows the steam off of her coffee and waits.

It's so easy to go blank, staring at the wall. Letting the time flow past her. Nothing but smells and temperatures. And then there's a tapping at the door, rhythm without familiarity because she doesn't know the fucking song the way the aliens do.

"Emma."

Not a question. Her knuckles turn white around the mug at the notes, hearing the last vowel drawn out. A bit of coffee spills over the side – she never did drink any of it – and she blinks rapidly, breathing.

"Emma, I know you're there. On the other side."

A little late, maybe, but her hand reaches out and picks up the key on the floor. Scrapes it across the wood on the way back, a normal sound, another scratch to join the others. Paul's idea, the locking bedroom, more than a bolt he can undo from the inside. Always thinking of her, the fucking idiot.

"Always on the other side."

"Because Paul locked you in there," Emma says. She's really not supposed to speak to it, but hey, fuck that.

"Paul wants to be with you." A low hum. "He found what he wants. All he wants is you."

Which would be why Emma and Paul should be at opposite ends of the country. Or maybe the fucking planet. Paul can take Antarctica, he's better at the cold. Or Emma can go to Australia, that's like the same thing.

Paul has tried to explain it: the wanting. What it means. Honestly, Emma related more to the part where he didn't actually want anything before. That bit made sense. Also, she's told him straight out that it makes it sound like it's all the alien shit that makes him actually Want her. It's pretty heavy stuff when your first attempt at a kiss involved more spat blood than tongues.

"Why don't you want me to be happy, Em?" 

She stares at the wall.

"You think this is what life should be? We're just getting by. Don't you want to be happy, too?"

Fuck, there's a headache really starting to build, right at the front.

"We can be the best versions of ourselves – have the happy ending we deserve."

"Key word being 'ending'," Emma mutters into her coffee. She shouldn't say anything, shouldn't let this thing that tries to wear Paul's body as just another suit get to her, but it's hard, okay? It's hard hearing this shit anyway, and it's hard hearing it in 'his' voice. Not that it is his voice, of course. You can hear the face-cracking grin in it. Even when Paul does smile bigger than just that little C tucked into the side of his mouth, it's never big and wide like that. And the eyes. Paul's eyes shouldn't do what this thing does to them. 

Fingers tapping against the other side of the door again, and maybe they never quite stopped, just literally changed their tune. Emma tries to hear it as random drumming the way humans do, only that never works. Paul fidgets and fiddles but he doesn’t tap like this. It’s usually the first sign one of these episodes is coming along to fuck the both of them up. 

"You're still here with me, Em," the thing says, which is exactly why Paul never once calls her 'Em'. "You want this."

"I want Paul," she snaps, still staring forwards even though she honestly couldn't even tell you what colour the wall is. 

"And he wants you," the thing coos. The last word stretches into a note, an actual 'ooo' like the goddamned Beach Boys or something. Great, that's another thing for her to get triggered by some time. Like 'all music' wasn't enough. Now they’ve gotta do specifics. "Isn't that something beautiful, Em? Isn't that something worth everything? Isn't that something what it's all about?"

Emma burrows deeper into her blanket without any conscious thought. The song's in there, though she can't hear the music. The intro couldn't be more obvious – absolutely hamhanded, they might have synchronicity but these aliens ain’t subtle in their segues – and she can't listen to Paul's body being jerked through the motions like this. "I'm leaving," she announces.

The words – the songs – stop. Despite being blue-shit-free, Emma can still tell when the orchestra cuts out, and she winces, curling up instinctively. 

It's not just ‘quiet’ on the other side of the door; it's something more sinister than that. An angry weight pushing down on the air, probably pulling Paul's face into expressions that never belonged there. Same way Paul doesn't give that rictus grin, he doesn't scowl and contort with rage. Sometimes she thinks she's making it that much harder on herself, letting it use his voice without looking it in the eye and knowing in an instant what she's talking to. Except it's stronger than her, and she's not at all strong in the ways she'd have to be. 

She can't watch this. She just can't. The fact he won’t let her means she never has to deal with that, and it’s such a fucking relief she wants to cry and punch him so hard in his stupid perfect office worker black coffee white bread _face_.

Behind her, the door suddenly jumps as the thing hits it, once and again. "Em!" Over and over, the hollow blows echoing, the wood pulsing like her heartbeat. Drumbeat, maybe: something angry. Maybe she could sample it and sell it to some wannabe punk band on YouTube. Say her boyfriend's an ar- _test_. "Just let me out! Let me out! Let me out!"

There's a pause there, like she's supposed to respond. Like _someone's_ supposed to respond. She hopes it's Paul, even if that does mean he has to sing. Life sucks that way.

She flinches with every impact, and yet this is better. This is so much better, because there's no begging and the thing isn't trying to be Paul anymore. There's a gleefulness in the anger, and it’s probably grinning wide open as it tries to beat the door down, but there's nothing remotely convincing and nothing pleading about any of it. 

And it won't get out. Paul and Emma spent days down at the hardware stores; spent the money PEIP gave them where they figured they needed it. Paul kept on breaking wood until they found a carpenter who took them seriously, and then they got started on the locks. Paul doesn't always have time to do more than the lock that goes with the key he slides under the door. After that, it's whatever bolts he can get to. The thing can throw all of them back, sure, but it hates that it has to do it. It hates it when life gets hard. That's the weird thing, actually, in their new normal. The aliens/infected/rabid extras _really_ can't stand it when things get difficult – when life doesn't work out for them.

Emma grips her coffee and stares at the wall and thinks about how this is something that she can do. Take that, alien shit.

\---

Who knows what it says about her that she can fall asleep to the sound of screaming? Of shouts and threats winding down into pleas and promises? Probably nothing great. To be fair, though, it's been a super long day and she's heard all this before.

Doesn’t matter, anyway. She might as well wonder what the world would say if that massive amorphous blob of humanity known as 'Them' knew her reaction to waking up tucked up on the sofa was to be royally fucked off.

"Paul?" she asks, meaning to project a sense of righteousness, only obviously she only just woke up so she could just as easily be telling him to hit the damned snooze button the way God intended. 

He never hits the snooze button unless she asks. He never stays in bed unless she asks. He's a perfect little office puppy and, if it wasn't for all the trauma, she might bother hating him for it, just in a fun way.

There's no answer, so she calls again, although she has to cut the volume halfway through because her head gives a throb. Not a nice hangover throb but the kind that gloats over you not getting enough sleep, leaving you at the mercy of biological neediness for the rest of the day. " _Pa_ ul – fuck."

"Em?" 

She parts the fingers covering her eyes enough to see him leaning over her, face twisting with concern. Or just twisting. Like she's any expert on emotions, after all.

"The fuck?"

"Er." Paul’s trying to guess what she's talking about. She knows because he always gets that little line between his eyebrows while the rest of his face goes a bit blank, which maybe some people would find unnerving but she just pictures the noises computers make when you ask them to do _fucking anything_. At least, with Paul, she knows she'll get an answer eventually and not just some bluescreen of death or an endless buffering circle.

She's...thinking a lot. That low humming buzz of thoughts (makes her think of powerlines) you have when you're trying to avoid something. When your brain knows there's something to build up to, only you still have your head literally in your hands and you have no idea why you're not just lying down in the nice soft bed your boyfriend made for you and – 

"The _fuck_?" Okay, she's catching up now.

Apparently so is Paul. "Sorry, I thought you'd be weirded out if I put you in your pajamas."

Emma looks at him. It's easier.

"Really, I remember, you had this whole thing last week when we were watching that movie marathon, about why changing a girl's clothes – er, a woman's clothes – why that was suddenly okay because she'd been through a traumatic event and the writers just couldn't come up with a decent excuse for why they wanted to put her in something...different."

Emma reckons ‘different’ is covering for 'more revealing,’ although, knowing her filthy mouth, she probably said something a lot blunter. That's not the point. "Why am I in bed?"

"I mean, you're not, technically," Paul says helpfully, still leaning with his arms crossed on the back of the couch. It's probably just as well Emma isn't sitting up enough to see the rest of him. The angle of his spine can't be natural, to get that effect, unless he's kneeling despite hating the way it makes his legs ache. "I – Give me a couple more minutes in there? I'm still, er." That small smile fades so easily. "I'm cleaning up."

That could mean anything. She hates that she doesn't know the answer. "I didn't ask you to put me here."

"Well, no. You were asleep." Paul swallows and the smile doesn't come back. Not the bad one, great, but not the good one either. "Em, I made up the couch for you, you could have just – "

"Nope," she interrupts, holding out a finger. Paul stops, but she still reaches up to press her finger against his lips. They're cold, as usual. She doesn't feel any wetness, though, and something tells her that, if she leant in closer, she'd smell spearmint. The same thing that tells her that if she did sit up and take a look, he'd be packed away neatly into one of his suits, the ones she really hates seeing around the place because this isn't work but they seem to help him keep it together, like buttons and knots can make up for whatever he thinks is missing. 

"Paul," she says, firmly, because he needs to hear his name when it's been like this. "I chose to be there. I wanted to be there."

"You didn't _want_ that."

"Don't tell me what I want."

"It's not _wanting_ , Em," Paul says quietly, pulling back a little. She can still see him though, and that's what matters. "It's not..." 

She waits, before it's obvious he won't be finishing that thought out loud. From the look on his face, he's actively trying to swallow it back and it just tastes like vomit. Blue vomit, presumably. "Sure, I wouldn't make a song and dance about it," she says, always too blunt and, yup, he flinches but sometimes Emma needs to be kind of a bitch and say it the way she needs to, "but there's more than one kind of want, idiot. And I don't want you to be alone, when that happens."

"I'm not alone, Em," Paul says miserably. "That's the whole point."

"Yeah, you are," she insists.

“I – ” He pulls his lips in, like she doesn’t know that means he’s biting them. “Em-ma,” he stumbles there, too late with the second part, “you can’t do anything, when it happens. It’s shouting and violence and it’s not right.” Now his mouth flattens. Holding back the last bit, she guesses. What he’s projecting with all this.

“Hey.” Her body complains but she squirms her way up onto her knees, cupping his face. Somehow his skin’s even colder than usual – freezer burn, not just corpse. Obviously it isn’t pleasant, and she just pushes closer, bringing her other hand up to. If she pulled away, maybe there’d be two handprints on his face, glowing. It’s not the worst image. “Whatever tangle’s happening in there, stop it. You’re not…that.” It’s weak, sure, only the alternative is worse because that means actually naming what he’s thinking and, with Paul, that’s what makes it real. Putting a label on it. Something anyone can understand. 

His hands almost come up to meet hers, except they freeze at the last second. “Every time it happens, Emma. Every time I think…” His eyes squeeze shut. “I mean, what if this is actually the last time I come back?”

Emma kisses him – not for some sweeping love display, just to make him stop talking (also make that bewildered face with the eyebrows that always makes her smirk). She keeps it soft, though. Then she says, “You weren’t supposed to come back the first time. If I’ve gotta put up with some relapses and some nights on the couch, that’s still better than some of my other relationships.”

He frowns. “That’s really not – ”

“Still talking,” she tells him. “I’m not the picture of healthy living either, and I don’t get to say I’m someone else at the time. You put up with my hot and cold shit just fine, even when I tell you you’re the worst person I’ve ever met.” That’s one of the milder ones. Sometimes there’s a whole blame game where she spends the next two weeks trying to unpick all the guilt she’s hit him with. Because she was an awful person before the trauma got here. “If that stuff never goes away, that’s fine, because you’re – shit. I had this whole speech I was going to hit you with, next time it happened. Needed more work though.”

“Rehearsals?” Paul asks, and fuck yes, she can hear a grin in there. 

“Might have to take it back for rewrites,” she says. “Try some test performances. Workshop it a bit.”

“You’re just saying words now.” His hands touch her shoulders, so tentatively, and then start to run down her sides.

“Forget it. Theatre kid shit.” She taps the side of her head. “You have stuff like that, right? I mean, I know Sycamore sucked but you were still a teenager. You must have some useless knowledge.”

His hands clearly want to rest on her waist, and talking over the couch is getting more and more ridiculous. “I wasn’t much of a one for extracurricul- ah!” So Emma stands up on the cushions and just wraps her arms around him. Paul can basically either fall or catch her, and that’s how she basically tricks him into picking her up.

He blinks at her, their faces now barely a couple of inches apart. “Okay. Um. Hi?”

“I like being near you,” Emma says. “Sometimes I can’t. It’s like…capitalism, or some shit. Gotta do the shitty job even if it means leaving and doing something you hate.”

“I don’t think this is like capitalism, Emma.”

“Yeah,” she says, “that’d suck,” and kisses him again.

His hands hook properly behind her, taking the weight, as he says, “I don’t think this actually solves anything I was saying.”

“Well, duh.” She tightens her own grip, just something reassuring, since you can’t really hug someone properly when they’re holding you up. “You want a solution, you don’t come to me. I’m literally a community college dropout.”

“Because PEIP gave you a diploma and a pot farm.”

“Exactly. I’m privileged by surviving the end of the world. I don’t know shit.”

“Ah, I see. I should go talk to some people who’ve never had their hometown invaded by aliens.”

“Now you’re getting it, see?”

He huffs a laugh against her. Fuck, she loves his laugh. It’s always so surprised to be there.

“Hey, Paul?”

“Yeah?” he says against her neck.

“You think you can put me down? Not that I’m not enjoying the view, but, er…” Her leg’s killing her. She just woke up but she’s exhausted. She can feel that tremble in her fingers no matter how tightly she knits them together which is going to just carry on up her arms to the rest of her. Paul _is_ kinda cold and her eyelids are drooping. “I could use a coffee.”

Paul looks at her, and even though she knows he’d never mean it that way, it feels like a dare to tell the truth. That said, he is really fucking pale, with blue still leaking through his eyeballs, and, before she made him take her weight, Emma saw the bruises where the thing beat his hands so hard against a solid door. “Black?” he asks.

“Yeah. All the fucking sugar you want though – go nuts.”

He starts to set her down on the floor. Maybe she lets out some sound she doesn’t notice, or he thinks of another goddamn nice thing to do; either way, his muscles tense again, enough for him to circle round the couch (no caveman hurling from him), so he can sit her down again. “Coming right up, miss,” he says, ridiculously exaggerated friendliness as he attempts the most awkward of finger-guns.

She returns them anyhow, adding a wink and a click of the tongue for good measure. “That’s why I come here. That and the eye candy.”

He stumbles a little as he goes, like the fucking nerd he is. Forget Sycamore: even if they’d been at the same high school, Emma would have bullied the shit out of him. It’s not like she’s proud of who she was in high school – is anyone?

Slowly, she pulls the blanket up around herself, grumbling when she has to shift from side to side rather than just stand up to get it out from under her. The shaking’s building now. Hopefully it won’t be too bad by the time Paul gets back. Delayed stress, she knows. She did have someone shouting and banging a door at her back not long ago, after all.

It’s okay, though. She’ll get a coffee, Paul next to her, and then it’s just surviving. Together. And fuck whatever the aliens say, surviving rules.


End file.
